The Cipher Twins
by C.A. Hulapi
Summary: (AU) At a young age, Bill Cipher kidnapped the Pines twins. Now, they live with him, in human form, in chaotic New York City, unknowing that their 'dad' is a dream demon. But when things are revealed, will they choose that which raised them, or their own kin? It's a two sided war, and in this battle, there are no neutral parties.
1. Prologue: Vanishings

"Seamus, please take good care of Daniel and Mabelline for us," said Ashleigh as she checked her purse for the schedule. "Last time Mabel caught a cold outside."

"They'll be fine," Eric assured her wife. "Seam's a good boy. And besides, love-" He lowered his voice. "-We can't keep them safe forever."

She sighed. "Oh, I know..."

Two little kids, a girl and a boy with curly brown hair of about three, peeked their heads out from behind their parents standing in the doorway.

The boy had on a way too big Cubs cap, some torn tartan jeans, a blue tee, and gray socks.

The girl, on the other hand, wore a pink, floofy dress with her mommy's old mint green sweater over it and a purple sock with blue hearts on one foot and no footwear on the other.

"Is Soomus here?" asked Mabel, her mouth struggling to say his name.

"Seasmus," corrected Dipper. "Mabel, his name is Seasmus. An' course he's here... Mommy and Daddy are goin'."

"Nuh uh, it's Soomus!"

"Here you go," said Mrs. Pines, finally done with finding the schedule in her purse.

"Now remember," said Mr. Pines sternly, facing his children, who, although just a second ago had been arguing, were now smiling innocently and slapping each other's hands behind their backs. "Mabel, no sugar, Dipper, no reading past eight, and both of you, don't go outside when it gets dark." He tugged on his jacket.

Ashleigh smiled and hugged her kids tightly. She didn't know why, but she had a very strong bad feeling. Well, sure, the Order meetings were dull... But...

"I love you," she whispered in their ears, and then she was gone, first in the car, then at a long table in some fancy house listening to Prime Head Clayton speak of accomplishments done over the past month by persevering members of the Order while she secretly whispered to her friend Jennifer.

The night passed slowly, dinner and dessert served and small-talk made with high-up associates from the Order, a web of politics.

Then something happened: the hall door burst open to reveal her husband, who had just gone out to take a call; But in the last five minutes, he'd changed.

His face was tear-spotted, his demeanor hysterical. He leaned back against the wall, moaning.

"What is this?" called High Counselor Derrick Odren as Ashleigh rushed to her husband, who, she now noticed, was also soaked- the forecast had been of heavy rain... She shook her head. Trivial things to be concerned with right now.

"My kids- My kids..." he moaned. "H-he got them- Dipper and Mabel-"

"Who?" shrieked Ashleigh, desperate. Her daughter, her son, taken? How-? What even-?

"Bill- he got them- drove the babysitter half insane, screaming into the phone... my kids..."

Ashleigh's brain stopped working, and then the world started spinning and she fell into her husband's arms and they both broke down sobbing for their children and for crimes done and just to cry. The voices and colors blurred, but- Was that her uncle Stan?

"Stan!" she called, and the head looked in surprise. "He took them- Bill, Bill did this! HE TOOK THEM!" She was wailing now, screaming her woes. "My children! He took them from me!"

The world took a dive and she was sobbing still, her mind shutting down. Her Dipper, her Mabel... just gone? No- nononononononononononono- the world was black and she was sure she was unconscious but she didn't care, she cried in her head and her thoughts were sobs and her breaths moans.

When she woke up (she'd been asleep?), she was in a white room (the infirmary at the Order's HQ), and her husband told her she had been catatonic for three hours (it'd seemed so much longer).

Ashleigh sat up and desperately asked, "Was it a dream?" Yes, that was it, surely she'd just eaten some sushi, she was allergic to that, and they were fine and it was all okay.

Eric said nothing. Why was the silence so empty and hopeless sounding?

"Are they O.K.?" Maybe she wasn't loud enough; There was still hope, it was just a dream and he hadn't answered because he hadn't heard her.

Nothing.

She moaned and collapsed into his arms, sobbing for her children and cursing Bill and saying maybe it wasn't him, maybe Seamus was drunk (although he was just twelve), they should send a search, probably in bed right now, Eric...

The following day, the police were baffled by the children's disappearance, as the Order knew they would be.

Seamus claimed to have heard laughter (high pitched, yet adult like, he said) and the kids crying out when he turned to get an applesauce for Mabel, but he was told that was ludicrous: He was half insane according to doctors, after all. Saying it was for his own good, his mom shipped him up north to his Grandma's before she went off to war in Iraq with the Air Force, in a small Oregon town where he got a job at some tourist trap under the name Soos- a mix of what the kids called him, he said- not realizing he was working for the great uncle of the kids he'd been watching the day they'd disappeared.

Time went, and they became half-forgotten memories, just two cute kids with some bad luck, and there was nothing anybody could do to change the past. And so life went on.

The Pines had another child, a boy with golden blonde hair, silky and smooth, taking after his mother, named Antonio.

He did not understand why, every November 2nd, his parents would sob into the night and smile bitterly and tell him stories of his (supposedly unreal) older siblings, and why, on May 7th, they'd eat pizza and birthday cake.

But when he was nine, his grandma explained what his questions to his parents didn't: One day, years ago, his twin brother and sister had up and disappeared with no trace, and Anto learned to just not have friends over on those days.

But the Pines twins were not dead; they were living all the way on the other side of the country in the city of New York.

And that is where our story begins.


	2. One: Introductions and Visions

The front door slammed shut behind them as the twins entered their cramped apartment.

"Home!" they called in unison as they dumped their bags in the living room, plopping onto the beat-up plaid red sofa.

"You guys want a Coke?" called their sitter, Grace, from the kitchen doorway. "There's three extras in here- Your dad'll never know."

"Sure!" called Mabel, and the twins did their per-usual tactic to see who got the first picks on TV- Rock, paper, scissors.

"Dad knows everything," muttered Dipper- it sure did seem like he did, though.

He'd known the time Dipper had broken his 'abstract' yellow lamp, and that sometimes Grace let her cat in (he hated cats), and even that Mabel stuck all her used pieces of gum on the underside of her bed.

"Finger gun beats everything!" called Mabel, grabbing at the remote and switching on Dream Boy High.

"How does that even make sense?!" asked Grace from the kitchen.

"It doesn't!" yelled Mabel gleefully, poking Dipper over and over again on the arm until he told her, in defeat, that yes, he guessed gun could beat the rest, now stop poking me, Mabel.

"Ugh," groaned Dipper, sliding off the couch. "Grace, toss it!"

The brown haired teen tossed the Coke towards Dipper, who caught it but slid backwards on the carpeted floor.

"Score one for Grace!" she shouted as she jumped over the couch and landed where Dipper had been, slamming down a bag of Doritos. "Uh, what was I- Oh, yeah! Your dad's gonna be gone this weekend."

The twins looked at her, momentarily surprised. "What?"

She munched a Dorito. "Well, yeah. Something about an important buisness trip. Associates and what-not, for work."

Now, before we continue, a word about the house.

It was decently big, three bedrooms and a front hallway, but it was cramped. All around, stacked high, were cardboard boxes and books and papers and writing utensils and various parts of various devices, doohickeys and what-nots and who-ha-whats-its, all skewed amiss across the living room and entry-way and hall.

The kitchen was filled to the brim with snack foods, strange spices, boxes of insta-macaroni and just-add-water pasta, packages of food with weird languages on the front that even the twins' dad himself sometimes forgot, and all kinds of tea: packages, brews, recipes, cans of it, jars of it, bottles of it.

The spare bedroom, their dad's office, was filled with antiques and knick-knacks hanging precariously off shelves, papers and envelopes and pens scattered over the two desks, old books in stacks, and computer and TV monitors hanging from the walls, broadcasting news and camera feed from the light poles down across the street and an animal channel and a religious channel and... Well, you get the idea.

That said, it was a nice house- er, apartment- if not chaotic.

So let's continue.

"Dad'll be gone?" asked Mabel, clicking 'Pause' on the remote. "But-"

"-this weekend's our birthday!" her twin finished protesting.

She sighed. "I know, I know. It sucks. But he said he was sorry and that he'd make it up as soon as possible. Okay? He's having a friend come over, because he doesn't trust me to stay here overtime- actually, he won't pay me for it- So from five at night to eight in the morn', you guys are staying with him."

Dipper and Mabel looked at each other, then sighed in defeat- Nothing could change the fact that their dad wouldn't be home for their birthday.

That night, before she left (she always left at nine on Fridays), she turned the TV off, letting the light bathing the sleeping twins on the couch dissipate, before pulling a blanket over them, and leaving, shutting the door behind her.

The only light in the apartment was from behind the door of the office.

It was red, seeping through the cracks but unable to escape.

* * *

Antonio smiled at his mom, who grinned back encouragingly as he raced to the middle of the court, his soles squeaking in protest against the shiny floor.

The third grade team had lined up, ready to grab the bright orange ball the ref was holding. It was Anto's team, the Meteors, against the Deckers, who were all very short but athletic looking.

The whistle blew, screaming at them to go, go, go!

The other team had the ball, but not for long. Tristan and him bumped into Pressure, getting on both sides of him. Tristan caught the ball, and he backed up to the goal.

Tristan to Avery, dribble, Avery to Sam, Sam to Tristan, Tristan to Yolanda... He yelled and waved his arms for open, and Yolanda threw it.

But time slowed down, the ball dipping through the air towards him in slow-mo. The gym was getting harder and harder to see, invisible against another image- An image of two kids, asleep on a couch, not of screaming people as the ball hit him hard and fast in the head and he fell back.

He heard his teammates, coach, and parents rush up and start yelling and waving their arms, but the words were too distant, and the image of the two kids becoming too deep, and eventually the sounds of traffic and the snoring of the kids took over the distant sounds of them yelling and him, him yelling, too, he thought.

Speaking of the kids, they were passed out under a dark green blanket, but the only reason he could see them was-

He turned around. Just as he'd thought. There was red light coming from under a door down the hall. He stepped lightly, but it sounded like he was not there, so he relaxed and walked with purpose down the hall with the striped yellow wallpaper and grayish shag carpeting.

The door knob burned his flesh, and he let out a high pitched scream, yet he couldn't let go, and something inside him grabbed the door harder and tugged, tried to tug the door open, but he crumpled to the ground, and all he saw was white then, and he heard the beeps of machines mixing in with his screams. Hospital.

* * *

Hundreds of miles away, a curly haired boy opened his eyes, frowned, then rolled over, back into a deep sleep.

* * *

**Hello guys. So um... HOLY CHEESE WHIZ, FIVE REVIEWS ON THE PROLOGUE! THE _PROLOGUE_!**

**Thanks to these awesome reviewers:**

_**TheFallingPenguin**_

_**Mrs. Cipher**_

_**PEACE LOVE AND SMILE DIP**_

_**Gravity Falls Alien**_

_**and Gliss Phantom**_

**Thank you guys so, so much! I feel really lucky to have this story finally up and going and to have some happy campers about it!**

**To celebrate this (and Thanksgiving, and my birthday, weekend before last), I'm going to try to upload a chapter a day, since I'm on Thanksgiving break. Now, this may not work out, but I can try. But this will mean just 1k words long chapters.**

**After that super long A/N, I am pleased to announce the number of words of this chapter before author's note is 1,076. Wait, that's short. Meh.**

**Thanks for your support, and please remember to hit that favorite button! **


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